Brexit legal challenge thrown out by high court in Belfast

A legal challenge that argued the Government’s Brexit technique will injury the Northern Ireland peace course of has been dismissed.

Lord Justice Bernard McCloskey delivered his ruling at Belfast‘s High Court on Thursday morning on three joined circumstances in opposition to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s dealing with of the UK’s departure from the European Union.

The trio of challenges contended {that a} no-deal Brexit on October 31 would undermine agreements involving the UK and Irish governments that had been struck throughout the peace course of and which underpin cross-border co-operation between the 2 nations.

But the choose, in his written ruling, choose stated: “I take into account the characterisation of the subject material of those proceedings as inherently and unmistakably political to be past believable dispute.

“Virtually the entire assembled proof belongs to the world of politics, each nationwide and supra-national.

“Within the world of politics the well-recognised phenomena of claim and counterclaim, assertion and counter-assertion, allegation and denial, blow and counter-blow, alteration and modification of government policy, public statements, unpublished deliberations, posturing, strategy and tactics are the very essence of what is both countenanced and permitted in a democratic society.”

One of the candidates was high-profile victims’ campaigner Raymond McCord, whose son was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1997.

Unlike Brexit-related challenges in opposition to the Government heard in England and Scotland, the Northern Ireland circumstances can’t leapfrog straight to the Supreme Court following the High Court judgment.

Any attraction would first should be heard by the Court of Appeal in Belfast.

Judges have put aside time, and indicated a willingness to take a seat over the weekend, to fast-track the listening to of any attraction.

That may doubtlessly pave the way in which for the Northern Ireland challenge to be heard in the Supreme Court alongside Scottish and English circumstances subsequent Tuesday.